Mapping Mattapan

John Steinberg, an archaeologist in UMass Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, and his students spent the first week of December searching for evidence of stables and other outbuildings on the former Fowler-Clark farmstead at Norfolk and Hosmer streets in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood. Historic Boston wants to buy the property, which appears on maps drawn between 1786 and 1806, and turn it into a community garden. Before they do that though, the organization wants to make sure there aren’t any important artifacts underneath the soil. Steinberg explains what the students did, and how the work in Mattapan connects to a summer project in Iceland, in this video.